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THE  ARTIST'S  LIBRARY 

GOYA 

By  W.  ROTHENSTEIN 


LIBRARYOFTHE 
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HARRIETSMITHI 
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Mariano  Benlliure  y  Gil. 
Portratbiiste  des  Malers  Goya. 


GOYA 


BY  W.  ROTHENSTEIN 


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LONDON:  AT  THE  UNICORN  PRESS  MDCCCCI 


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I 


In  the  case  of  the  greatest  masters  of  painting,  however  con- 
siderable their  influence  over  us,  and  however  well  acquainted 
we  may  be  with  their  works,  we  are  overwhelmed  anew  each 
time  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  one  of  them  ;  and  what 
was  a  more  or  less  remembered  pleasure  becomes  an  emotion 
of  such  violence,  that  we  are  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  something 
like  shame  for  not  having  cried  the  names  of  Giotto,  Van  Eyck, 
Rembrandt,  (as  the  case  may  be,)  daily  from  the  housetops. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  happen  that  a  remote  and  exquisite 
remembrance  of  a  picture  will  be  spoiled  upon  later  acquaintance  ; 
and  we  are  often  somewhat  timid  of  reapproaching  certain  of 
those  idols  which  opened  out  before  us,  at  an  early  period  of 
our  development,  a  new  vista  of  art,  and  gave  us  an  added 
sense  of  nature,  or  romance.  And  though  it  is  perfectly  true 
that  we  should  only  allow  ourselves  to  be  occupied  with  the 
very  best  art,  we  must  beware  of  applying  to  such  any  standard 
of  snobbishness. 

For  however  many  reasons  men  may  give  for  their  admiration 
of  masterpieces,  it  is  in  reality  the  probity  and  intensity  with 
which  the  master  has  carried  out  his  work,  by  which  they  are 
dominated  ;  and  it  is  his  method  of  overcoming  difficulties,  not 
of  evading  them,  which  gives  style,  breadth,  and  becoming  mystery 
to  his  execution.  And  this  quality  of  intensity,  whether  it  be 
the  result  of  curiosity  for  form,  or  of  a  profound  imagination 
for  nature,  which  lives,  as  it  were,  upon  the  surface  of  a  drawing, 
or  of  a  picture,  is  the  best  test  we  have  for  what  we  may 
consider  as  art.  ' 

A  general  tendency  among  English   painters  has  been,  I 

5 


think,  with  few  notable  exceptions,  to  seek  inspiration  from 
pictures  rather  than  from  Nature.  The  influence  Hogarth  might 
have  exercised  was  quickly  overridden  by  that  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  whose  erudition  and  passion  for  pictures,  and  genuine 
dislike  of  all  he  did  not  consider  to  be  sufficiently  sublime  in 
life,  whose  high  standard  of  excellence,  and  distinguished  person- 
ality, earned  for  him  a  position  no  artist  had  hitherto  held  in 
England.  The  veriest  hint  from  Nature  sufficed  him  for  his 
pictures,  and  if  he  was  a  little  too  familiar  with  beauty,  it  was 
at  least  this  lack  of  humility  which  enabled  him  to  hand  down 
to  posterity  a  host  of  beautiful  women,  and  distinguished  gentle- 
men, v/ith  glimpses  of  poetic  scenery  behind  them. 

Neither  Holbein  nor  Van  Eyck  nor  Diirer  have  indeed 
had  any  appreciable  effect  upon  the  English  school  of  painting. 
That  uprightness  which  Englishmen  practise  in  their  lives, 
they  would  seem  rather  to  despise  in  their  art,  and  Venice 
has,  for  the  last  hundred  years,  been  their  Mecca.  The  view 
that  an  artist,  in  the  arrangement  of  his  life,  and  the  choice 
of  his  subjects,  should  feel  himself  to  be  above  suspicion,  is 
not  always  held  in  this  country  even  by  painters  themselves. 
Rembrandt  is  still  more  admired  as  a  painter  of  portraits  than 
for  that  serene  and  serious  outlook  on  life,  that  profound  in- 
terpretation of  nature  and  Christlike  sympathy  for  men  and 
women,  which  he  shows  in  his  compositions.  The  accusation 
of  a  lack  of  taste  is  one  not  uncommonly  brought  against 
him  by  otherwise  distinguished  men,  and,  were  he  now  living 
among  us,  he  would  not  perhaps  have  any  less  leisure  on 
his  hands  than  when  he  painted  the  wonderful  portraits  of 
himself  and  of  Hendrickje. 

It  was  into  France  that  the  influence  of  Goya's  art,  like 
Constable's,  first  entered.  Proofs  of  the  drawings  he  made 
upon  stone  at  Bordeaux  got  into  the  studios  in  Paris  ;  and 
the  younger  painters,  Delacroix  more,  perhaps,  than  any  of 
the  others,  began  to  realise  the  significance  of  the  new  elements 
of  composition  and  style  shown  in  these  remarkable  prints. 

Goya  was  the  connecting  link  between  traditional  art  and 
the  violently  awakening  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  and 
v/ith  the  new  emotions  he  found  a  new  manner  of  expressing 
them.  Much  that  was  bizarre  and  tumultuous,  the  strangeness 
of  charm,  a  certain  curious  and  sombre  side  of  beauty,  the  sense 

6 


of  the  strength  of  a  personahty,  the  reflection  of  extravagant 
gaiety,  or  excessive  horror,  Goya  was  able  to  render  in  a 
manner  that  had  never  been  seen  before.  A  world  of  his 
ovv^n  imagining  always  haunted  him,  and  he  gave  full  play 
to  his  fantastic  inventiveness.  His  men  and  women  have  all 
something  of  the  overpowering  genius  that  Balzac  gave  to  his 
characters.  That  sharpness  of  reality,  which  only  Van  Eyck 
has  been  able  to  keep  undivorced  from  the  highest  and  most 
patient  science  and  labour,  was  so  alluring  to  Goya,  that, 
though  he  was  gifted  with  the  power  of  creating  works  of 
traditional  finish,  his  passion  for  this  mysterious  quality  of  life 
made  him  willing  to  sacrifice  precisely  those  qualities  which  are 
looked  for  and  admired  in  most  painters,  for  a  peculiar  grip 
and  vivacity  of  presentment.  Hence  to  all  he  touched  he 
gave  immense  vitality.  And  for  this  reason  his  work  has  a 
rare  fascination,  a  fascination  we  are  not  perhaps  so  much 
aware  of  before  his  pictures,  but  one  which  grows  slowly  upon 
us,  lending  certain  new  qualities,  if  we  allow  our  minds  to  dwell 
on  them  at  all,  to  our  view  of  men  and  women  ever  after. 

His  nature  was  frank  and  even  brutal,  disdainful  but  not 
ignorant  of  refinement.  Perhaps,  the  more  violent  his  subject,  the 
more  relish  had  he  in  attacking  it.  But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  he  did  what  so  many  artists  pride  themselves  on  doing,  what 
so  few  do  :  he  painted  to  please  himself. 

Though  he  lived  among  princes  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  he 
never  flinched  from  his  principles  ;  perhaps  never  before  did  an 
impetuous  and  anarchical  nature,  so  impatient  of  injustice,  live 
side  by  side  with  the  worldly  and  selfish  natures  that  go  to  make 
a  Court. 

To  me  it  has  never  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that,  see- 
ing the  frankness  of  his  attitude,  both  as  regards  his  art  and  his 
life,  all  the  aristocracy  of  Spain  should  have  been  so  eager  to  sit 
before  him,  and  become  possessors  of  his  pictures  and  his  prints. 
He  was  enabled,  through  the  fashion  which,  in  spite  of  his  attitude, 
he  enjoyed  for  a  prolonged  period,  and  his  quick  sympathy  with 
the  sufferings  as  well  as  the  amusements  of  the  people,  to  press, 
as  it  were,  the  whole  life  of  Spain  on  to  his  canvasses  ;  and  it  is 
no  small  thing  to  say  that,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  Balzac, 
no  single  man  has  ever  given  us  so  complete  a  picture  of  a  period 
which  covers  considerably  more  than  half  a  century. 

7 


II 


Francisco  Jose  de  Goya  y  Lucientes  was  bom  at  Fuendetodos, 
near  Saragossa,  in  1746.  Having  the  advantage  of  being  the  son 
of  poor  but  robust  working  people,  he  received  no  more  education 
than  a  village  schoolmaster  in  the  last  century  could  give ;  but  a 
growing  love  for  drawing  brought  him  at  the  age  of  fifteen  to 
Saragossa,  to  the  studio  of  Lusan,  an  artist  of  some  intelligence 
and  reputation,  who  had  studied  in  Italy,  and  held  in  particular 
esteem  the  works  of  Tiepolo.  Under  him  he  worked  for  some 
four  or  five  years ;  but  that  indifference  to  injustice,  which  allows 
young  painters  to  lead  such  calm  and  dignified  lives  in  England, 
was  absent  from  Goya's  anarchical  nature.  His  desire  for  freedom 
of  thought  and  action  soon  earned  him  a  dangerous  reputation  ; 
and  his  father,  afraid  lest  his  son  might  fall  into  the  clutches  of 
the  Inquisition,  then  still  in  the  full  force  of  its  existence,  managed 
to  send  him  to  Madrid.  The  jealous  mistrust  which  exceptional 
intelligence  seems  not  uncommonly  to  sow  in  the  minds  of  foolish 
people,  soon  made  Madrid  equally  dangerous  for  Goya ;  the  many 
escapades  of  which  he  was  accused  were  as  likely  as  not  the 
subject  of  considerable  exaggeration.  It  seems,  however,  true 
that  he  was  found  lying  in  the  street  with  a  knife  sticking  into 
his  back,  one  summer  morning ;  and,  being  again  annoyed  with 
rumours  of  some  action  to  be  taken  by  the  Inquisitors,  he  deter- 
mined, with  characteristic  energy,  to  go  to  Rome.  There  is  no 
trace  to  be  found  of  any  work  of  his  executed  during  the  first 
few  years  he  spent  in  Madrid;  but  the  effect  of  his  personality  was 
already  so  marked,  that  on  his  arrival  in  Rome  he  immediately 
found  himself  in  the  most  interesting  circles  of  the  Eternal  City. 
M.  Yriarte,  in  his  admirable  biography  of  Goya,  writes  that  he 

8 


worked  his  way  south  from  Madrid  as  a  bull-fighter.  At  Rome 
he  was  welcomed  and  materially  assisted  by  his  compatriots,  and 
set  about  studying  the  works  of  such  masters  as  appealed  to  his 
own  temperament,  copying  scarcely  at  all ;  indeed,  he  would  seem 
to  have  spent  but  little  time  before  his  easel ;  we  know  from  the 
Mercure  de  France  "  that  he  won  a  second  prize  at  Parma  for  a 
Hannibal,  victorious,  seeing  Italy  for  the  first  time  from  the 
summit  of  the  Alps,"  and  that  he  painted  a  full-length  portrait  of 
the  Pope  (Benedict  xiv.) — still  preserved  at  the  Vatican — in  a  few 
hours  ;  but  little  else  is  certain  of  his  movements  in  Italy. 

The  story  goes  that,  in  attempting  to  carry  off  a  young  girl 
from  a  convent,  Goya  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  monks,  from 
whose  hands  he  was  with  difficulty  rescued  through  the  interven- 
tion of  the  Spanish  Ambassador  at  Rome. 

It  was  in  Rome  that  he  became  intimate  with  Bayeu,  one  of 
the  painters  to  Charles  iii.,  and  saw  much  of  David,  with  whom  he 
corresponded  later  in  life,  and  whose  revolutionary  ideas  must 
have  strengthened  his  own  convictions.  Bayeu  was  of  no  small 
service  to  him  on  his  return  to  Madrid  in  1775,  and  gave  him  his 
daughter  Josefa  in  marriage  ;  and  he  now  began  to  show  talent  of 
so  certain  an  order,  that  the  other  Spanish  painters  of  importance, 
feeling  it  would  be  impossible  to  crush  him,  joined  with  the 
younger  enthusiasts,  who  hailed  Goya  as  their  new  leader. 

In  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando  at  Madrid  hang  five  small 
canvasses  by  his  hand,  belonging  to  the  period  following  his  return 
from  Italy.  They  must  come  as  a  complete  surprise  to  those  who 
are  only  acquainted  with  the  few  scattered  works  by  Goya  to  be 
seen  out  of  Spain.  These  pictures,  all  of  them  fantastic  or  violent 
in  subject,  are  painted  in  a  delicate  and  silvery  key,  with  exquisite 
lightness  of  touch.  The  composition,  remotely  inspired,  perhaps, 
by  recollections  of  Guardi  and  Longhi,  is  in  each  case  strikingly 
original.  In  the  ''Little  Bull  Fight"  we  see  for  the  first  time  that 
trick  of  putting,  as  it  were,  a  girdle  of  figures  along  the  frame, 
round  the  central  point  of  interest,  the  use  of  which  fascinated 
Goya  throughout  his  life,  and  which  we  see  used  in  identically  the 
same  manner  in  one  of  the  finest  of  his  lithographs,  drawn  some 
fifty  years  later  at  Bordeaux. 

These  small  pieces  are  perhaps  more  comparable  with  the  early 
paintings  of  Hogarth,  at  the  period  when  he  too  was  influenced, 
through  Ricci,  then  in  England,  by  the  late  Venetians;  such 
B  9 


painting  as  we  see  in  the  sketch  of  the  Street  Musicians  at  the 
Oxford  Gallery,  or  in  the  small  panels  he  executed  before  the 
engravings  for  Butler's  Hudibras. 

ELentierro  de  la  Sardina,  reproduced  in  this  volume  (Plate  I.), 
may  perhaps  show  such  relationship,  and  give  some  idea  of  the 
remarkable  vivacity  and  spirit  of  the  painting  and  of  the  com- 
position. Indeed,  Goya's  powers  in  this  latter  direction  were  so 
apparent,  that  Mengs,  the  admired  Pretender  to  the  throne  of 
Raphael,  the  Dictator  of  all  the  Arts  during  the  reign  of 
Charles  iii.,  actually  commissioned  him  to  execute  a  series  of 
designs,  which  were  to  be  woven  into  tapestries  for  the  decoration 
of  the  Prado  and  the  Escurial. 

These  cartoons,  being  intended  for  this  purpose,  are  painted  in 
so  crude  a  key,  and  with  so  little  regard  for  harmony  of  colouring, 
that  their  merit  is  apt  to  escape  the  attention  of  many  students  at 
the  Prado,  who  would  otherwise,  perhaps,  be  naturally  attracted  to 
them. 

Brutally  painted,  they  nevertheless  show  to  the  full  those 
qualities  of  the  eighteenth  century  school,  which  consist  in  giving, 
instead  of  studied  trees,  hands,  or  folds  of  drapery,  something 
remarkably  like  them.  Already  in  these  designs  he  shows 
promise  of  his  own  profound  observation  and  versatility  ;  and  the 
facility  he  acquired  in  his  youth  for  escaping  difficulties  was 
beginning  to  be  of  immense  service  to  him  in  grappling  with  them. 
The  divers  elements  of  romping  charm  and  somewhat  sombre 
romanticism  lend  a  curiously  alhiring  character  to  the  whole,  and 
it  is  perhaps  difficult  to  understand  why  these  cartoons,  so  able 
and  so  original,  should  not  have  commanded  more  interest,  outside 
Spain. 

The  brilliant y^^^^i?  del  cucharon,  the  children  blowing  a  bladder 
and  gathering  fruit  in  a  tree, — curiously  suggestive  of  the  English 
school, — the  Stilt  Walkers,  the  laundresses  by  the  Manzanares, 
and  those  robust  wantons  tossing  the  pelele  in  a  blanket,  are  so 
ably  painted,  and  so  original  in  composition,  that,  even  taking  the 
colour  and  the  somewhat  disagreeable  quality  of  the  surface  into 
consideration,  it  is  impossible  not  to  regard  them  as  works  of 
singular  importance. 

Many  of  these  popular  subjects  Goya  repeated  later  for  the 
Countess  of  Benavente,  at  the  Alameda,  on  a  smaller  scale,  and 
with  a  more  delicate  palette. 

lO 


The  success  of  these  tapestry  designs,  of  his  Christ  Crucified, 
(now  in  the  museum  of  the  Prado,)  and  the  St.  Francis  on  the 
mountain,  with  which  the  old  King,  Charles  iii.,  expressed  himself 
especially  delighted, — though  neither  of  them  can  be  considered 
representative  of  Goya's  genius, — obtained  for  him  in  1780  a  seat 
in  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando. 

Don  Luis,  the  King's  brother,  was  one  of  the  first  to  offer 
Goya  his  patronage,  and  Charles  himself,  shrewd  enough  to  know 
that  without  great  subjects  a  King  is  but  a  small  Prince,  was 
beginning  to  be  alive  to  the  glory  Goya  might  contribute  to  his 
reign.  There  was,  indeed,  no  one  to  compete  with  him,  and 
people  had  quickly  discovered  his  gifts  as  a  portrait  painter. 
Though  Maella  and  Bayeu  were  the  official  painters  to  the 
Court,  Goya  was  sought  after  by  persons  of  every  quality,  the 
tongue  of  gossip  lending,  maybe,  an  element  of  mystery  to 
the  studio.^ 

The  most  important  work  he  undertook  about  this  time,  was 
for  one  of  the  cupolas  in  the  Church  of  del  Pilar  at  Saragossa,  the 
decoration  of  which  Bayeu  had  been  commissioned  to  execute  in 
part,  and  to  superintend. 

Goya's  designs  were,  in  the  first  place,  not  approved  by  the 
Dean  and  Chapter ;  and,  suspicious  of  the  part  his  father-in-law 
might  have  had  in  their  judgment,  he  refused  to  alter  them.  The 
rigid  principles  of  the  artist  to  produce  his  own  work  in  his  own 
manner  have,  probably  since  the  beginning  of  things,  been  the 
cause  of  bitterness  and  strife  between  him  and  the  public.  To  be 
humble  before  nature,  to  work,  unmindful  of  everything,  uniquely 
for  the  standard  of  perfection  he  has  set  himself,  is  the  true  life  of 
the  artist ;  rightly  or  wrongly,  the  shock  of  misapprehension  on  the 
part  of  others,  the  result  of  an  absence  of  sympathetic  perception, 
or  of  an  entirely  different  point  of  view,  which  never  fails  to  fling 
the  painter  into  despair  at  his  dependence  on  a  patron,  brings  into 
play  a  spirit  of  arrogant  stubbornness  on  his  part,  which  is  usually 
incomprehensible  to  his  friends,  and  causes  him  often  to  be  left 
with  his  work  on  his  hands. 

1  That  Goya  was  faithful  to  his  wife  it  would  be  idle  to  pretend ;  that  he  was  deeply 
attached  to  her  during  her  lifetime  is  undeniable.  She  bore  him  twenty  children,  of 
whom,  at  his  death,  but  one  son  was  alive.  With  the  single  exception  of  his  devotion  to 
the  unfortunate  Duchess  of  Alba,  his  intrigues  seem  to  have  been  as  much  caprices  on 
the  part  of  his  sitters,  as  his  own. 

II 


In  this  instance  the  Cupola  was,  however,  eventually  decorated 
by  Goya  with  slight,  if  any,  alterations,  as  may  be  seen  by  com- 
paring it  with  the  designs  still  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the 
Cathedral. 

For  Don  Luis  he  painted  a  large  number  of  portraits,  both  of 
himself  and  his  family  and  their  circle  of  friends.  Brought  up 
as  he  was  among  the  mountains,  come  of  peasant  stock,  Goya,  for 
all  the  subtlety  of  his  mind,  never  stooped  to  match  his  character 
with  those  of  the  aristocrats  in  whose  company  he  now  found 
himself.  His  quick  intelligence  took  the  place  of  breeding,  while 
the  readiness  of  his  wit,  and  his  curiously  fascinating  personality, 
made  of  him  the  most  attractive  person  of  Don  Luis'  circle. 

Of  enemies,  nor  is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  he  had  not  a  few  ;  but 
he  caused  his  pencil,  which  was  as  sharp  as  his  sword,  to  be  as 
much  respected,  and  he  had  the  townspeople  of  Madrid — who  had 
for  Goya,  on  account  of  his  uncommon  physical  strength  and 
skill  in  their  games  and  amusements,  a  positive  hero-worship — at 
his  back. 

He  had  indeed,  and  without  exerting  any  voluntary  influence, 
that  magnetism  which  gives  to  certain  people  a  peculiar  power  of 
enslaving  all  classes  of  men  and  women. 


12 


Ill 


In  1789,  Charles  iv.  made  Goya  Pintor  de  cdmara  del  Rey, 
thus  giving  him  an  official  entry  to  the  Palace.  Under  Charles 
III.  the  Court  still  kept  up  the  old  traditions,  and  an  appearance 
at  least,  of  rigid  asceticism.  But  the  new  King  troubled  his  head 
very  little  about  matters  of  etiquette,  and  his  Queen  Maria  Luisa, 
with  her  favourite  Godoy,  afterwards  Prince  de  la  Paix,  quickly 
turned  the  Court  into  a  nest  of  intrigue  and  gallantry.  Goya  was 
not  of  a  character  to  be  easily  effaroiLchd,  but  he  showed  his 
contempt  for  the  looseness  of  Maria  Luisa  and  her  Court,  in  his 
letters  and,  more  openly,  in  his  etchings.  He  was,  however, 
received  with  open  arms  by  all  the  different  parties,  more  especially 
by  that  of  the  Countess  of  Benavente,  the  head  of  the  Ossuna 
family,  and  one  of  the  richest  and  most  powerful  ladies  of  Maria 
Luisa's  circle. 

For  her  he  painted,  besides  various  decorations  for  the 
Alameda,  her  country  house  near  Madrid,  and  a  quantity  of 
portraits,  more  than  a  score  of  compositions,  chiefly  illustrative 
of  the  popular  life  of  Spain.  Before  this  important  collection 
came  under  the  hammer,  it  was  at  the  Alameda  that  Goya's  genius 
could  be  seen  to  the  fullest  advantage.  The  Countess'  sympathy 
with  his  temperament,  by  which  she  was,  indeed,  for  a  time, 
completely  dominated,  sharpened  his  imagination  and  allowed  free 
play  to  his  rare  range  of  subject.  The  refined  and  somewhat 
exotic  atmosphere  of  her  luxurious  country-house  seems  at  times 
to  have  seduced  Goya  into  gallant  painting,  and  a  somewhat 
Spanish  gallantry,  as  may  be  observed  from  an  example  we  have 
in  the  National  Gallery,  which  came  from  the  Ossuna  Collection. 
A  better  and  more  characteristic  canvas  hanging  near  it,  is  the 

13 


priest  pouring  oil  into  the  Devil's  lamp,  a  piece  of  daring  anti- 
clericalism  which  shows  how  fearless  Goya  was  becoming,  now 
that  he  had  secured  the  Royal  patronage. 

Among  the  most  alluring  of  the  popular  scenes  were  the  mat 
de  cocagne,  a  chaise  stopped  by  brigands,  the  game  of  kiss  in  the 
ring  (a^subject  he  had  already  treated  in  his  tapestry  designs),  and, 
with  the  Romeria  de  san  Isidro,  the  most  important  of  all,  the 
construction  of  a  church,  the  tower  surrounded  by  scaffolding,  with 
workmen  bringing  up  immense  blocks  of  stone.  The  fine  design 
of  this  shows  Goya  under  one  of  his  best  aspects.  The  Romeria 
is  the  only  one,  perhaps,  over  which  his  hand  has  obviously 
lingered.  He  seems,  as  a  rule,  to  have  hurried,  as  it  were,  to  ease 
himself  of  the  excitement  his  observation  and  exuberant  imagina- 
tion caused  him;  his  mind  was  rarely  sufficiently  tranquil  for 
prolonged  work  on  any  one  picture,  and  his  anxiety  to  preserve 
the  freshness  of  nature  on  his  canvasses  prevented  his  carrying 
them  to  a  more  detailed  though  less  spontaneous  completeness. 

The  Romeria  de  san  Isidro  is  a  small  canvas,  representing  the 
great  yearly  fete  on  the  banks  of  the  Manzanares,  along  which  are 
pitched  miniature  booths,  crowds  of  holiday  makers  circulating 
among  them,  with  tiny  coaches  picking  their  way  through,  the 
palaces  and  steeple  of  Madrid  rising  up  on  the  other  side  of  the 
river,  spread  out  beneath  the  feet  of  a  sparkling  bevy  of  rich  idlers 
in  brilliant  dresses  in  the  foreground  of  the  picture. 

The  quantity  of  detail  Goya  has  put  into  this  small  canvas  is 
surprising,  and  he  writes  to  his  friend  Zapater  that  he  will  not 
readily  undertake  such  a  labour  again. 

(' \  The  picture  of  the  manolas  on  the  balcony  (Plate  VII.)  is 
painted  with  the  same  apparent  ease,  which  we  find  in  those  of 
the  Alameda.  The  brilliance  and  gaiety  of  the  women,  and  the 
fatale  aspect  of  the  sinister  gallants  standing  behind  them,  are 
rendered  in  a  peculiarly  imaginative  manner ;  the  original  of  this, 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  of  Goya's  canvasses,  is  in  the  possession 
of  the  Ducde  Montpensier,  and  hangs  at  the  Palace  of  San  Telmo, 
at  Seville.  A  repliqua,  by  Goya  himself,  was  exhibited  at  the 
Palais  des  Beaux  Arts  in  Paris,  a  few  years  ago.  His  occasional 
diabolical  tendency  is  shown  in  the  cartoon  of  Saturn  devouring 
his  children,  once  hanging  in  Goya's  own  house,  and  now  in  the 
Prado,  a  sinister  and  powerful  composition,  reminding  one  strangely 
of  the  designs  of  Auguste  Rodin. 

14 


Many  of  his  portraits  he  painted  in  a  single  day,  a  sitting  not 
of  a  few  hours  merely,  but  one  that  lasted  the  whole  of  the  day, 
during  which  time  Goya,  inexorable  towards  his  model,  worked  in 
absolute  silence  with  extraordinary  concentration  and  vigour. 

His  palette  was  of  the  simplest,  and  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
painting  at  some  distance  from  his  sitter,  attacking  the  masses 
broadly  in  monochrome,  and  once  his  planes  and  proportions  were 
thoroughly  well  established,  he  worked  in  colour  where  it  was 
needed.  It  must  not,  however,  be  imagined  that  all  his  portraits 
were  attacked  in  a  breathless  manner.  The  remarkable  group 
of  Charles  iv.  and  his  family  in  the  Museum  of  the  Prado  at 
Madrid,  the  portrait  of  Guillemardet  (the  first  French  Republican 
Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  Spain)  in  the  long  gallery  of  the 
Louvre,  those  of  Godoy,  of  Bayeu,  (Plate  IX.,)  of  the  Duchess  of 
Alba,  of  the  Duke  of  Fernan-Nunez,  and  others  of  the  same 
order,  are  pushed  to  a  state  of  great  completeness,  both  of 
execution  and  of  design. 

But  the  restlessness  of  his  temperament  made  him  inclined  to 
seize  on  a  characteristic  rendering  of  pose  and  feature.  A  Miss 
Linley  Goya  could  not  give  us,  but  something  very  like  the 
delicate  wantonness  of  a  Perdita  we  may  discover  in  more  than 
one  of  his  canvasses.  He  delighted  in  the  very  particular  beauty 
of  Spanish  women  ;  in  their  proud  manner  of  walking,  of  wearing 
a  mantilla,  a  flower  ;  in  their  elaborate  fashion  of  dressing  the  hair. 
He  never  tired  of  painting  the  high-heeled  Moorish-pointed  shoes 
in  vogue  in  his  day  among  Spanish  ladies.  A  favourite  method 
was  to  paint  them  seated,  holding  themselves  very  erect  from  the 
hips,  almost  cambrd. 

His  men  he  endowed  with  a  quality  of  vitality  which  elicited 
the  enthusiastic  admiration  of  Courbet,  but  he  was  also  capable  of 
a  subtle  characterisation  often  absent  from  the  portraits  of  the 
great  Frenchman.  From  Velasquez  he  learned  how  to  compose 
his  equestrian  portraits, — one  of  the  finest  of  which,  that  of  the 
Queen  Maria  Luisa,  riding  astride  her  great  horse,  in  the  uniform 
of  a  colonel  of  the  guards,  with  the  air  of  a  woman  who  loved 
men  better  perhaps  than  she  was  loved  by  them,  hangs  in  the 
Prado  ;  but  he  was  too  interested  in  a  simple  and  direct  inter- 
pretation of  nature,  to  care  to  make  much  use  of  traditional  poses 
in  any  but  his  official  portraits,  for  which,  indeed,  they  were  more 
aptly  suited. 

15 


*'In  nature,"  he  used  to  say,  ''colour  exists  no  more  than 
line, — there  is  only  light  and  shade.  Give  me  a  piece  of  charcoal, 
and  I  will  paint  your  portrait  for  you." 

''All  painting,"  he  said  again,  "consists  of  sacrifices  and 
parti-prisy 

Of  his  nervousness  when  at  work,  and  his  irritability,  the 
onslaught  he  made  on  the  great  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  wished 
to  bring  away  from  Spain  his  portrait  by  Goya,  but  exasperated 
him  by  comments  upon  the  work  while  in  progress,  is  a  character- 
istic example  ;  in  a  fit  of  passion  Goya  took  a  sword  from  the 
wall,  and  forced  his  noble  sitter  to  beat  a  retreat  from  his  studio. 
The  Duke  afterwards  realised  his  presumption,  and  the  portrait 
was  resumed,  and  is  now  at  Strathfieldsaye.  There  is  in  the 
present  volume  a  reproduction  of  an  extremely  interesting  drawing 
in  sanguine  by  Goya  of  Wellington,  which  lends  a  quality  of 
delicacy  and  sensitiveness  to  his  features,  not,  I  think,  apparent 
in  any  other  portrait  of  the  Iron  Duke.  The  original  drawing 
is  in  the  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum. 

The  gratitude  which  patrons  expect  from  their  proteges  was 
not,  perhaps,  in  Goya's  case,  sufficient  to  gratify  the  exigence  of 
the  Benavente,  more  especially  as  she  saw  that  he  was  becoming 
entirely  absorbed  in  her  younger  rival,  the  lovely  Duchess  of  Alba, 
whose  beauty  had  that  quality  of  suggestiveness  which  appeals  so 
strongly  to  a  painter,  and  allows  of  his  seeing  her,  according  to 
his  mood,  or  hers,  as  a  Juno,  or  an  Amaryllis.  It  was  at  the  same 
time  essentially  Spanish,  and  in  her  Goya  discovered  those 
elements  of  character  and  charm  which  immediately  responded 
to  an  ideal  of  his  own,  thus  calling  into  existence  a  hitherto 
unexpressed  type  of  woman. 

The  scandal  of  the  painter  s  too  intimate  friendship  with  the 
Duchess  of  Alba  began  to  be  whispered  at  the  Court ;  and  Maria 
Luisa,  whose  own  reputation  was  by  no  means  unimpeachable, 
(probably  at  the  instigation  of  the  Countess  of  Benavente,  who 
imagined,  perhaps,  that  her  rival  once  removed  to  a  safe  distance, 
Goya  would  be  seen  more  frequently  at  the  Alameda,)  bade  the 
Duchess  retire  to  her  residence  at  San  Lucar. 

Goya,  without  hesitation,  applied  to  the  King  for  a  prolonged 
leave  of  absence,  and  prepared  to  accompany  her  into  exile. 
This  incident  was  the  indirect  cause  of  the  distressing  deafness 
from  which  he  subsequently  suffered,  an  infirmity  which,  with 

i6 


advancing  years,  became  so  acute  that  no  sound  could  reach  his 
ear.  M.  Yriarte  tells  how,  an  accident  happening  to  their  travelling 
carriage  on  the  road  to  San  Lucar,  far  from  any  village  where  a 
blacksmith  might  have  been  found,  Goya  himself  undertook  to 
remedy  the  defect,  and,  lighting  a  fire  to  heat  and  straighten  one 
of  the  iron  bars  belonging  to  the  coach,  through  the  heat  and 
exertion  caught  a  chill  which  brought  on  the  first  symptoms  of 
this  weakness.  Indeed,  the  whole  of  this  business  was  tragic 
enough  ;  Goya  s  absence  from  Madrid  was  so  greatly  felt,  that 
in  the  year  following  the  Duchess  was  recalled,  and  died  shortly 
after  her  return,  before  her  beauty  had  begun  to  fade.  M.  Yriarte 
speaks  of  having  seen  a  sketch  book  containing  many  piquant  and 
touching  sketches  illustrative  of  their  journey  together. 

Besides  the  many  compositions  and  drawings  for  which  the 
Duchess  sat,  Goya  painted  a  full-length  portrait  of  her,  wearing 
her  hair  in  the  fantastic  manner  she  affected,  and  her  favourite 
pet  dog  at  her  side  ;  an  achievement  of  which  he  was  particularly 
proud.  It  is  she  we  see  looking  down  from  the  ceiling  of  San 
Antonio  de  la  Florida,  from  the  pillows  at  the  Academy  of  San 
Fernando,  (Plate  VI.,)  and  we  find  her  subtle  personality  breath- 
ing all  through  the  pages  of  the  Caprichos. 


17 


IV 


In  1795  Goya  was  unanimously  elected  Director  of  the 
Academy,  and  although  Maella  was  still  officially  the  first  painter 
to  the  King,  Goya's  popularity  was  at  its  height.  He  would 
receive  the  whole  Court  at  las  Romerias,  his  house  just  outside 
Madrid,  where  he  provided  sumptuous  and  often  bizarre 
entertainments. 

Although  he  would  seem  to  have  been  sufficiently  frank  and 
outspoken  with  regard  to  his  agnostic  opinions,  his  position  was 
so  unique  that  he  was  entrusted  three  years  later  with  the  decoration 
of  the  new  and  fashionable  Church  of  San  Antonio  de  la  Florida. 

I  can  remember  nothings  which  o-ave  me  so  clear  an  idea  of 
Goya's  cynicism.  Imagine  a  coquettish  little  church  with  a  white 
and  gold  interior,  more  like  a  boudoir  than  a  shrine,  but  furnished 
with  altar,  and  seats  and  confessionals.  One's  nostrils  expect  an 
odour  of  frangipani  rather  than  incense,  and  it  must  be  admitted 
that  Goya's  frescoes  do  not  strike  a  discordant  note  in  this  in- 
decorously holy  place. 

He  painted  various  frescoes,  besides  a  considerable  number 
of  religious  pictures  for  many  of  the  churches  in  Spain,  at  Seville, 
Valencia,  Saragossa,  and  Toledo,  but  it  was  only  when  he  treated 
Biblical  subjects  in  a  more  or  less  dramatic  spirit  that  these  com- 
positions assume  any  importance. 

The  frescoes  at  San  Antonio  de  la  Florida  are  painted  with 
great  science  and  breadth,  in  treatment  recalling  the  manner  of 
the  elder  Tiepolo ;  the  principal  subject  is  the  legend  of  the 
miracle  of  Saint  Anthony  bringing  a  dead  man  to  life.  The 
spandrils  and  tympanuns  are  filled  with  angels  perhaps  a  little 
daring  in  the  insolence  of  their  foreshortening. 

18 


The  scene  of  Saint  Anthony  is  depicted  on  the  cupola  as 
taking  place  behind  a  railing  which  surrounds  the  whole  of  the 
composition,  and  behind  which  a  vast  concourse  of  people  is 
grouped.  The  design  is,  however,  nowhere  concentrated,  and 
fails  to  be  dramatic.  Whether  Goya  indeed  intended  it  to  be  so 
is  doubtful,  for  he  probably  arranged  it  merely  for  the  purpose  of 
representing  a  crowd  of  popular  figures  taken  from  the  streets 
and  salons  of  Madrid. 

The  whole  of  these  decorations,  the  cupola  alone  containing 
more  than  a  hundred  figures,  considerably  over  life  size,  Goya 
executed  in  three  consecutive  months,  without,  it  appears,  missing 
a  single  day  s  work,  and  they  are  considered  by  his  own  countrymen 
to  be  his  greatest  achievement ;  but  in  spite  of  their  brilliancy  and 
power,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  rather  in  his  more  intense  inter- 
pretation of  life  that  his  greatest  force  lies. 

The  most  important  ecclesiastical  canvas  executed  by  Goya 
is  one  hanging  in  a  somewhat  remote  part  of  the  Church  of  San 
Anton  Abas  at  Madrid,  an  extremely  dignified  and  impressive 
composition,  representing  the  communion  of  Saint  Joseph  of 
Calasanz,  from  which  M.  Alphonse  Legros  might  well  have 
derived  some  of  his  inspiration. 


19 


V 


The  decoration  of  the  Church  of  San  Florida  won  for  Goya 
the  much  coveted  office  of  first  painter  to  the  King  of  Spain,  just 
at  the  time,  oddly  enough,  when  he  was  in  great  measure  laying 
aside  his  brushes  to  take  up  the  needle. 

He  had  up  to  this  time  done  but  a  few  desultory  etchings  of 
slender  merit,  besides  a  series  of  careful  plates  after  the  pictures 
of  Velasquez.  But  a  study  of  the  prints  of  Rembrandt  turned  his 
attention  to  the  wider  possibilities  of  the  copper,  and  he  began  to 
work  upon  a  set  of  designs  which  were  eventually  published  to- 
gether under  the  title  of  los  Caprichos.  These  caprices,  certainly 
the  most  widely  known  of  all  his  etchings,  were  produced  one  by 
one,  and  were  passed  from  hand  to  hand  among  his  friends  ;  the 
extravagant  reports  of  their  daring  allusions  to  personal  and 
political  intrigues  of  the  Court  soon  created  an  immense  amount 
of  excitement  in  Madrid,  and  the  whole  matter  was  on  the  point 
of  coming  before  the  Inquisitors,  when  the  King,  by  a  cunning 
subterfuge,  suggested  maybe  by  Godoy,  disarmed  an  inquiry 
which  might  have  had  awkward  results  for  Goya,  by  ordering  the 
etcher  to  send  him  the  plates  he  had  cormnandeci  from  him. 

The  humanity  displayed  in  those  prints  is  so  large,  the  obser- 
vation so  piercing,  and  the  satire  so  just  and  reasonable,  that  to  us 
it  matters  nothing  whether  Maria  Luisa  and  the  Benavente,  Urquijo 
or  Godoy,  be  the  particular  people  over  whose  backs  Goya  flour- 
ished his  lash.  Whether  don  Carlos  was  entirely  ignorant  of  their 
possible  allusions  to  his  Queen  and  himself,  or  whether  he  was 
clever  enough  to  ignore  them,  must  be  a  matter  for  conjecture. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Goya  s  hatred  of  the  Church,  which  to  his 
mind  acted  in  direct  contradiction  to  the  Gospel  of  its  founders, 
and  condoned,  if  not  encouraged,  the  cruelty  and  injustice  of  those 

20 


in  power,  suggested  some  of  the  bitterest  pages  of  the  Caprichos  ; 
but  he  made  no  attempt  to  suppress  a  natural  indignation  at  the 
sight  of  the  folly  and  vulgarity  of  men,  which  so  many  people  are 
able  to  regard  impassively. 

Too  much  prominence  has  been  given,  perhaps,  to  the  Capri- 
chos among  the  reproductions  of  Goya's  work  here  given,  but  the 
beauty  and  novelty  of  the  compositions,  their  Gargantuan  spirit, 
the  quite  astonishing  knowledge  of,  for  instance,  animals  and  birds 
they  display,  and  their  satanic  extravagance,  combine  to  give  them 
an  interest  which  I  have  found  irresistible. 

But  their  real  power  lies — and  this  applies  to  all  of  Goya's 
etchings — in  the  introduction  of  subtle  and  distinguished  qualities 
of  draughtsmanship  into  generally  fantastic  compositions. 

That  Delacroix  copied  every  plate  of  the  Caprichos,-^  is  no 
small  thing  to  add  in  their  praise ;  and  indeed,  for  that  power  of 
uniting  observation  of  life  and  form  with  his  own  imagination, 
Delacroix  owed  not  a  little  to  the  Spaniard. 

A  quite  particular  sense  of  the  wanton  charm  of  women,  and  a 
half  dandified,  half  savage  character  he  gave  to  his  men,  make 
these  etchings  peculiarly  haunting.  Only  Hokusai  was  capable  of 
such  monstrous  gaiety,  such  stinging  satire,  and  he  alone  could 
have  lent  probability  to  such  monstrous  phantasy  ;  Hogarth  was 
too  sermonising,  Rowlandson  too  rollicking;  a  certain  diabolical  side 
of  his  nature,  which  Goya  allowed  to  be  seen  both  in  the  Capri- 
chos and  the  Desastres,  has  probably  prevented  his  etchings  gaining 
a  footing  in  England.  Whether  this  be  the  case  or  not,  his  prints 
are  rarely  to  be  met  with  in  this  country. 

Although  the  subjects  are  not  so  engaging  as  those  of  the 
Caprices,  it  was  in  the  series  afterwards  entitled  Los  Desastres  de  la 
Guerra  that  Goya  reached  his  highest  point  of  perfection  as  an 
etcher. 

It  was  during  the  occupation  of  Spain  by  the  French  troops, 
that  Goya  commenced  a  set  of  drawings  in  sanguine  for  these 
violent  but  superb  plates.  It  is  not  so  much  the  patriotism  of  a 
Spaniard,  but  the  outraged  sense  of  a  thinking  man,  that  one  feels 
underlying  them  ;  there  is  none  of  the  stirring  kettledrum  note  of 
a  Kipling,  but  a  stern  desire  to  show  the  equally  appalling 
savagery  of  conquest,  or  defeat. 

1  The  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum  possesses  a  drawing  by  Delacroix  after  one 
of  these  etchings,  and  I  have  seen  another  in  the  collection  of  M.  Degas. 

21 


VI 


The  etchings  of  Goya  mark  an  important  epoch  in  the  history 
of  the  art.  Since  Rembrandt,  with  the  single  exception  of  Tiepolo, 
no  one  had  made  use  of  the  copper  successfully,  as  a  medium  for 
personal  expression.  That  there  should  have  been  so  few  masters 
of  etching  is  surprising,  when  we  consider  how  alluring  is  the 
actual  impression  on  a  clean  sheet  of  paper,  of  a  few  lines,  drawn 
at  haphazard  upon  a  plate.  But  frank  and  direct  as  are  Goya's 
etchings,  they  were,  unlike  most  of  his  paintings,  only  drawn  upon 
the  plate  after  the  most  careful  and  complete  preliminary  studies. 
He  cared  little,  however,  as  may  be  imagined,  for  the  more  precious 
side  of  the  art ;  his  particular  use  of  aquatint  served  him  to  give  a 
yet  more  sombre  note  to  his  designs, — no  one,  except  Turner,  has 
used  it  with  so  much  success.  Unfortunately  the  aquatint,  lying 
nearer  the  surface  of  the  plate  than  the  more  deeply  bitten  line, 
wears  off  after  a  certain  number  of  impressions  have  been  taken, 
and  only  those  prints  contemporaneous  with  Goya  give  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  quality  of  his  etchings.  Among  the  Caprices 
especially  are  several  plates,  in  which  there  is  actually  no  line  used, 
the  effect  being  obtained  entirely  by  the  aquatinting,  but  the 
Disasters  depend  less  on  this  process,  and  more  upon  the  quality  of 
the  line,  which  is,  in  many  cases,  of  quite  surprising  beauty. 

Of  the  vigour  and  finish  of  the  drawing,  and  the  rare  imagina- 
tion for  suffering  displayed  in  this  series,  the  two  plates  here  repro- 
duced, (Plates  XVI 11.  and  XIX.,)  are  good  examples;  as  dramatic 
compositions  they  are  perhaps  the  most  important  since  the  work 
of  Rembrandt. 

The  violence  and  brutality  consequent  on  the  invasion  of  a 
peaceful  country  by  a  horde  of  soldiers,  is  expressed  throughout 

22 


with  exceptional  frankness, — Goya  was  not  of  a  nature  to  gild  the 
corpses  of  his  countrymen  as  they  lay  stark  on  the  ground  ;  but  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  slaughtering  of  one's  fellow-creatures 
is  now  conducted  in  a  better  ordered  manner,  and  more  respect  is 
paid  to  prisoners  and  to  their  property,  to  women  and  children  and 
to  the  dead,  than  was  the  case  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  century. 
What  Goya  saw  with  his  own  eyes — what  he  heard  and  read  of 
the  French  invasion — he  made  use  of  for  these  Disasters.  It  was 
long  after  his  death  that  the  whole  of  these  plates  saw  the  light, 
and  they  were  afterwards  retouched  and  rebitten,  and  published  by 
the  Academy  of  San  Fernando  at  Madrid.^ 

Besides  these,  Goya  etched  a  series  of  plates,  known  as  the 
Tauromackia,  equally  remarkable,  perhaps,  for  their  spirit  and 
knowledge  of  the  bull-ring,  as  for  their  intrinsic  merit  as  etchings  ; 
there  is  a  wonderful  fascination  in  their  sinister  vehemence,  and 
many  of  the  compositions  are  of  great  originality,  (Plate  XX.  ; )  it  is 
probably  the  consummate  mastery  of  the  later  lithographs  of  similar 
subjects,  which  is  inclined  to  make  people  underrate  the  etchings. 
Los  Proverbios,  among  which  is  one  of  the  finest  plates  etched  by 
Goya,  (Plate  XXI.,)were  probably  done  after  the  Tauromachia.  The 
original  impressions  are  so  scarce,  and  the  plates  have  subsequently 
been  so  ill  handled,  that  it  is  difficult  to  judge  them  with  any 
degree  of  fairness,  for  the  aquatinting  has  evidently  been  tampered 
with  to  a  considerable  extent. 

1  Copies  of  this  edition  may  be  seen  both  in  the  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum 
and  in  the  Art  Library  at  South  Kensington. 


23 


VII 


The  later  years  of  Goya's  life  were  spent  under  gloomy  circum- 
stances. The  King  and  Queen,  with  Godoy,  fallen  from  his 
brilliant  heights,  were  in  exile  at  Fontainebleau,  and  Joseph 
Bonaparte — Pepe  Botellas — had  been  placed  by  his  brother  on 
the  throne  of  Spain.  Goya,  grown  bitter  and  self-absorbed,  and 
caring  little  for  what  King  he  might  be  the  painter,  took  the  oath 
of  allegiance  along  with  most  of  Charles's  Court,  and  painted  the 
usurping  King's  portrait  without  any  feelings  of  compunction. 

In  1 8 14,  greatly  to  the  people's  joy,  the  Prince  of  the  Asturias 
returned  to  Spain,  and  was  crowned  King  as  Ferdinand  vii.,  and 
a  number  of  Bonapartists  were  driven  into  exile.  ''Since  our 
absence,"  he  said  to  the  old  painter,  "you  too  have  deserved 
exile,  nay  the  rope  itself ;  but  you  are  a  great  artist,  and  we  will 
forget  everything."  He  sat  many  times  to  Goya;  an  equestrian 
portrait  of  the  King  hangs  at  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando,  and 
another  is  at  the  Prado,  representing  Ferdinand  come  in  hot  from 
a  gallop,  his  horses  being  led  away  in  the  background,  a  splendidly 
frank  piece  of  characterisation. 

Goya  was  now  totally  deaf,  and  most  of  his  old  associates 
were  dead.  The  greater  part  of  his  time  he  spent  in  his  own 
house,  in  the  society  of  old  dilettanti  and  such  few  of  his  friends 
as  remained.  He  made  a  number  of  drawings  for  a  new  series 
of  Caprices,  which  he  never,  however,  etched.  There  is  a  drawing 
at  the  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  a  scene  from  the 
Inquisition,  which  might  well  be  one  of  them. 

Worn  out  as  he  was,  feeling  he  no  longer  belonged  to  the 
new  Court,  where  he  perhaps  fancied  himself  to  be  looked  on 
with  more  disfavour  than  was  actually  the  case,  it  is  small  wonder 

24 


that  he  should  wish  to  leave  Madrid,  where  everything  reminded 
him  bitterly  of  his  past  triumphs ;  he  cared  nothing  now  for  all  the 
things  which  he  had  once  fancied  gave  him  so  much  pleasure ; 
but  his  energy  and  love  for  his  work  remained.  The  last  work 
he  did  before  he  went  to  France  was  the  Saint  Joseph  of  Calasanz 
for  the  Church  of  San  Anton  Abad,  to  which  I  have  already 
referred  as  among  his  finest  canvasses.  There  was  some  un- 
pleasantness on  the  part  of  the  canons,  who  objected  to  pay 
the  price  Goya  asked  for  this  picture ;  enraged  at  their  haggling, 
he  refused  to  continue  it,  and  the  Superior,  so  the  story  goes, 
went  down  on  his  knees  before  the  old  painter,  whom  he 
eventually  appeased,  and  the  picture  now  hangs  in  the  Church. 

Goya  left  Madrid  in  1822,  and  proceeded  to  Paris,  where  he 
witnessed  the  beginning  of  the  great  romantic  movement  which 
he  himself  had  indirectly  helped  to  bring  about.  There  is  no 
evidence  of  his  having  come  into  personal  contact  with  anyone 
but  Vernet ;  for  Gros,  that  triste  martyr  to  false  feelings  of 
loyalty  to  a  master,  he  had  a  profound  admiration,  and  he  was 
astonished  and  delighted  with  what  he  saw  of  the  works  of 
Gericault  and  Delacroix.  But  for  the  overwhelming  life  of  Paris 
he  felt  himself  too  old  ;  he  preferred  to  be  near  his  own  people, 
and  settled  down  among  other  exiles  from  Spain,  at  Bordeaux, 
with  an  old  and  valued  friend,  Mme.  Weiss.  His  apathy  in- 
creased with  his  years,  but  he  was  cheered  occasionally  by  the 
devoted  Mme.  Weiss,  whose  bright  enthusiasm  for  all  he  used 
to  love,  would  bring  back,  now  and  again,  some  of  his  old 
gaiety. 

Various  paintings  belonging  to  this  late  period  having,  in  one 
way  or  another,  come  into  the  salerooms,  are  apt  to  give,  perhaps, 
to  many  who  are  unacquainted  with  the  great  Spanish  collections, 
a  somewhat  false  impression  of  Goya's  powers.  Although  some 
of  the  portraits  of  his  friends  which  he  painted  at  Bordeaux, 
notably  of  Moratin  and  of  Pio  de  Galena,  possess  extremely  fine 
qualities  of  form,  and  a  great  style,  his  rapidly  failing  eyesight  caused 
his  colour  to  be  heavy  and  often  somewhat  crude.  It  was  when 
he  could  use  a  loup,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  execution  of  those  small 
paintings  on  ivory,  (Plate  XII.,)  which  are  too  little  known  even 
to  collectors  of  his  work,  and  above  all,  in  the  most  remarkable 
compositions  of  his  life,  certainly  the  greatest  and  most  significant 
lithographs  in  the  history  of  the  art,  known  as  les  Taureaux  de 
c  25 


Bordeaux,  that  we  find  all  his  old  powers  unimpaired.  Like  so 
many  great  men  who  commence  a  new  art,  he  seems  to  have 
almost  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  the  stone,  in  these  four 
superb  prints.  Their  effect  upon  the  rising  generation  may  be 
seen  in  the  lithographs  of  Delacroix,  and  later  in  those  of  Honore 
Daumier. 

But  the  old  painter  was  growing  restive  away  from  his  own 
country,  and  felt  a  craving  to  return.  He  wished,  having  seen 
the  work  of  his  younger  contemporaries  in  Paris,  to  measure 
with  their  work  his  own  frescoes  at  the  Church  of  San  Antonio 
de  la  Florida.  He  was  received  in  Madrid  with  every  mark  of 
distinction,  and  the  King  begged  him  to  sit  to  Lopez,  so  that 
he  might  have  the  portrait  of  "the  greatest  painter  Spain  has 
seen  since  Velasquez."  He  was  actually  painted,  but  carried  off 
the  portrait  after  a  couple  of  sittings,  lest  it  be  spoiled  by  Lopez' 
"  niggling  brush." 

He  returned,  however,  shortly  afterwards  to  Bordeaux,  and 
retired  still  more  into  solitude.  He  would  sit  for  days  together, 
dumb  and  indifferent ;  and  again  his  old  rage  would  come  upon 
him,  and  he  would  draw  furiously  upon  everything  which  came 
under  his  hand,  or  practise  the  juego  de  RiquitiLlas  with  the 
five  points.  He  was  the  object  of  much  admiration  and  curiosity 
in  the  town  on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  wandered  abroad, 
looking  out  from  under  his  Boliva^^  hat  with  his  wonderful  heavy- 
lidded  eyes. 

A  year  after  his  return  in  1828,  he  died,  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
two,  surrounded  by  a  few  old  friends,  exiles,  like  himself,  from  a 
country  they  had  all  loved  with  a  like  passion.  He  lies  buried 
in  the  cemetery  of  Bordeaux. 


26 


VIII 


With  Goya  died  the  whole  art  and  life  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  Spain  lost  its  last  great  painter.  His  importance 
lies  not  so  much  in  view  of  his  extraordinary  personality,  but 
in  the  fact  of  his  having  invented  an  entirely  new  method  of 
composition,  the  riches  of  which  have  not  yet  been  exhausted, 
nor  its  range  equalled.  He  was  the  first  to  aim  a  decisive  blow 
at  the  army  of  picture  makers,  who  manufactured  trees,  nymphs, 
and  tiresome  portraits  after  receipts  known  to  them  all.  He 
brought  back  to  painting  the  old  architectural  sense,  and  square- 
ness of  proportion  and  design,  which  the  artists  of  the  last  century 
had  allowed  to  dwindle  into  the  vignette.  He  saw  that  nature 
composed  with  even  a  finer  sense  of  balance  than  Raphael,  and 
with  the  aid  of  planes  of  light  and  shade,  delicately  adjusted.  It 
was  precisely  this  rare  sense  of  composition  which  enabled  him 
to  bring  about  that  revolution  in  style,  which  was  eventually  to 
crush  the  most  powerful  classical  movement  since  the  days  of 
Poussin. 

He  saw  actuality  with  a  highly  romantic  vision,  and  with  that 
spirit  of  fatality  lurking  in  the  rear,  which  has  become  so  character- 
istic of  nineteenth  century  thought ;  the  world  to  him  seemed  full 
of  the  weirdness  of  a  sudden  transition  from  darkness  to  light, 
and  light  to  darkness,  as  though  it  were  for  a  moment  illumined 
by  a  sudden  tongue  of  flame.  There  is  that  sense  of  nervous 
ferocity,  unveiled  as  it  were  for  a  moment,  which  culminated  in 
the  fighting  horses  of  Delacroix,  in  his  lions  devouring  horses  and 
men,  and  in  the  still  more  profound  work  of  the  sculptor  Barye, — 
nature  caught  or  missed  at  a  leopard's  spring.  Goya  was 
more  interested  in  men  and  less  in  things,  was  more  savagely 

27 


human  and  less  sublimely  poetic,  than  the  great  Frenchmen ; 
he  had  more  curiosity  for  emotion,  and  less  constancy  and 
patience.  It  has  seemed  remarkable  to  many  of  his  biographers 
that  he,  who  believed  so  obstinately  in  a  close  study  of  nature, 
should  also  have  occupied  himself  with  an  occult  and  purely 
imagined  side  of  life ;  that  an  atheistical,  satanic  philosopher 
should  have  cared  to  represent  actually  just  those  superstitions, 
a  belief  in  which  he  so  profoundly  despised.  And  indeed  it 
would  seem  to  be  a  by  no  means  usual  thing,  that  Goya  should 
have  been  able  to  represent  the  life  about  him  so  completely,  and 
should  yet  be  able  to  create  a  non-existent  world  of  demoniacal 
beings.  But  it  must  be  remembered,  that  the  faculty  for  creating 
form  and  movement  points  at  an  imagination  for  reality,  which 
can  readily  be  brought  to  bear  upon  purely  fantastic  subjects. 

Goya  was  in  fact  among  the  rare  few  who  are  able  to  make 
these  seem  possible,  even  natural.  He  does  not  carry  us  into 
a  mythical  world,  but  brings  fancy  into  the  realms  of  reality, 
disappears,  as  it  were,  into  the  darkness,  to  bring  back  with 
him  the  monsters  he  found  there  ;  Hokusai  had  this  same  quality 
of  the  imagination,  the  same  cult  for  the  grotesque.  Goya  shows 
us  exactly  how  witches  ride  through  the  air,  how  they  goad  their 
weary  brooms  through  the  night,  of  what  monstrous  breed  they 
are  and  of  what  foul  form  ;  yet  with  so  little  exaggeration,  that 
they  seemed  to  have  lived  as  actually  as  his  inquisitors,  majas, 
and  toreros,  whereas  the  spirits  calculated  to  terrify  us  in  the 
drawings  of  Blake,  for  instance,  leave  one  unmoved,  for  the  reason 
that  no  representation  of  form  is  ever  convincing  in  his  work. 
"A  picture,  the  effect  of  which  is  true,  is  finished,"  was  a 
favourite  dictum  of  his  which  has  been  applied  since  in  a  sense 
different,  perhaps,  to  his  meaning.  For  by  this  he  meant  not 
only  truth  of  line,  tone,  or  colour,  but  also  truth  of  movement 
and  emotion,  of  observation,  in  fact.  As  with  Daumier  and 
Millet,  his  sense  of  form  was  creative,  as  well  as  imitative,  and 
like  these  he  was  able  to  produce  an  absolutely  convincing  effect, 
through  his  knowledge  and  intuition,  where  a  more  careful  and 
conscientious  artist  would  fail  ;  and  it  is  this  imagination  for 
reality,  this  power  to  render  nature  dramatically  and  impressively, 
that  makes  of  him  one  of  the  most  siofnificant  artists  of  the  last  two 
hundred  years.  The  humanity  grafted  on  to  the  tree  of  beauty 
by  the  gentle  Rembrandt,  was  cultivated  by  Goya  in  a  more 

28 


critical  and  aggressive  spirit ;  for  he  was  not  only  the  greatest 
painter  of  his  age  in  Spain,  but  also  the  most  fearless  and 
advanced  thinker. 

The  mere  mention  of  his  name  brings  up  before  us  a  series  of 
vivid  pictures  of  an  already  remote  period.  But  the  men  who 
can  paint  their  own  times  with  the  insight  of  Goya,  in  a  manner 
paint  all  times.  Each  age  has  the  vanity  to  believe  that  those 
past  masters  whose  reputations  are  unquestioned  in  its  day,  are 
among  the  immortals.  So  long,  however,  as  any  fashion  exists 
for  the  painting  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  Goya's 
position  is  secure. 


29 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ETCHINGS  AND  LITHOGRAPHS 

OF  GOYA 


Los  Caprichos 

The  Caprices  were  probably  commenced  about  1792-93,  and  the 
prints  were  first  issued  to  subscribers  in  1796.  Up  to  the  follow- 
ing year  only  seventy-two  had  been  printed,  so  that  only  those 
prints  which  appeared  before  the  editions  of  1802,  when  the  whole 
of  the  eighty  plates  which  now  form  the  Caprices  were  published, 
are  in  their  finest  state.  Goya  himself  superintended  the  printing 
of  the  first  pulls  from  his  plates,  which  may  be  recognised  by  the 
slightly  foxy  colour  of  the  ink,  (black  in  the  subsequent  editions,) 
and  the  paper  on  which  they  were  printed  bore  no  watermark. 

Two  additional  Caprices  were  etched  by  Goya  for  the  Duchess 
of  Alba,  but  are  of  extreme  rarity,  and  were  never  circulated,  even 
among  his  own  friends. 

There  are  many  explanations  and  surmises  with  regard  to 
the  precise  significance  of  many  of  the  plates.  The  curious  may 
find  much  interesting  information  on  this  point  in  M.  Lefort's 
excellent  and  careful  study  of  the  etchings  of  Goya.  Unfortun- 
ately, as  is  often  the  case  with  very  painstaking  scholars,  he  only 
weakens  the  immensely  forcible  impression  made  upon  one  by  the 
etchings  themselves,  and  scarcely  explains  the  most  obscure 
among  them.  To  my  own  mind,  Goya's  own  explanations, 
printed  underneath  the  plates,  are  more  satisfactory. 

The  Caprices  have  been  re-issued  several  times  of  late  years 
by  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando,  and  have  been  wonderfully 
spoiled  in  the  process. 

30 


Los  Desastres  de  la  Guerra. 

This  series  was  never  published  together  during  the  Hfetime 
of  Goya,  and  contemporary  prints  are  among  the  rarest  treasures 
of  the  collector  ;  these  exist  either  before  the  number  of  the  plate 
has  been  etched  upon  it,  or  after  the  number,  which  Goya  placed 
upon  the  right  side  at  the  bottom  of  the  plate.  In  the  edition 
published  by  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando,  although  the 
original  number  is  preserved,  a  fresh  one  has  been  added,  at  the 
top  of  the  plate. ^  In  the  first  copies  of  the  collected  edition,  which 
bears  the  date  of  1863,  the  prints  were  pulled  with  considerable 
care,  and  are  of  a  reddish  colour.  A  few  of  these  were  printed 
without  the  text  written  underneath,  but  must  not  be  confused 
with  the  original  proofs.  These  exist  both  before  and  after  the 
aquatint  has  been  added,  and  are  printed  with  black  ink,  upon 
hand-made  paper  with  a  lined  surface,  and  the  watermark  serra  dis- 
cernible upon  it ;  whereas  the  subsequent  edition  was  printed 
upon  very  white  paper,  with  the  edges  cut,  and  bearing  the  mark 
J.  G.  D.  The  last  edition  (1892)  is  on  similar  paper,  but  shows 
no  watermark. 

In  the  completed  editions  published  by  the  Academy  of  San 
Fernando,  there  are  eighty  prints  in  all,  but  of  these  the  last 
fifteen  are  of  a  different  character  to  the  rest,  and  might  more 
fairly  have  appeared  under  the  name  of  Caprices. 

In  the  unique  collection  which  Goya  offered  to  his  friend 
Cean  Bermudez,  there  are  two  more  prints  added,  which  are 
included  in  neither  of  the  editions  of  the  Academy.  M.  Lefort 
was  fortunate  enough  to  discover  the  original  plates,  which  had, 
in  some  unaccountable  manner,  gone  astray.  These  he  had 
printed  in  Paris,  and  they  proved  to  be  of  singular  interest.  The 
first  represents  a  huge  beast  disgorging  a  crowd  of  human  beings. 
The  second  is  significant  of  the  social  revolution  at  hand, — a  young 
woman  representing  Liberty,  showing  the  sun,  rising  above  the 
horizon,  to  a  working  man. 

The  Tauromachia 

The  first  edition  of  this  series  was  never,  for  some  obscure 
reason,  publicly  circulated,  although  it  would  have  been  calculated 
^  In  the  prints  these  numbers  appear  of  course  on  the  left  side. 

31 


to  appeal  more  particularly  to  the  Spanish  people,  until  after  the 
death  of  Goya  and  of  his  son.  These  impressions  of  the  plates, 
which  numbered  thirty-three,  are  extremely  brilliant,  and  may  be 
recognised  by  this,  and  by  the  watermarks  on  the  paper,  which 
differ  according  to  their  progress,  viz.  serra,  morato,  or  7iolo.  The 
title  of  the  work,  and  the  descriptions  of  the  different  plates,  were 
printed  on  a  separate  sheet,  and  the  title  runs  as  follows : — 
Treinta  y  ires  estampas  que  representan  diferentes  suertaes  y 
actitudes  del  arte  de  lidiar  los  toros,  inventadas  y  grabadoas  al  agtca 
fuerte  en  Mad7nd por  Don  Francisco  de  Goya  y  Lucientes. 

The  second  edition,  which  was  printed  and  published  by  the 
Chalcographic  Society  of  Madrid  in  1855,  is  of  very  inferior 
impression,  and  is  easily  distinguishable  from  the  first  by  the  fact 
of  its  having  the  portrait  of  Goya  on  the  outside  of  the  cover,  as 
in  the  case  with  the  later  editions  of  the  Caprices,  and  the  title 
and  text  on  the  back. 

A  third  edition,  produced  more  than  thirty  years  afterwards  by 
Loizelet,  in  Paris,  contains  seven  plates  which  were  not  included 
in  the  earlier  ones.  Three  of  the  plates  of  the  Tauromachia  are 
signed. 

In  the  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  there  is  a  set  of 
the  impressions  of  the  first  edition,  with  which  it  is  instructive  to 
compare  that  of  the  reprinted  one  of  1855. 


Los  Proverbios 

These  obscure  plates,  the  date  of  which  is  uncertain,  were 
never  published  during  Goya's  lifetime.  They  first  appeared  in 
1850,  and  were  apparently  printed  with  little  care.  A  second 
edition  was  taken  in  hand  by  the  Academy  of  San  Fernando  in 
1864.  M.  Lefort  has  pointed  out  that  these  superb  and  impress- 
ive etchings  have  been  not  only  ill  handled,  but  absolutely  ruined 
by  the  treatment  they  have  received  at  the  hands  of  their  printers. 

Eighteen  of  these  were  printed  in  the  editions  of  1850  and 
1864,  but  three  more,  since  reproduced  in  I'Art,  may  very  well  be 
placed  among  them. 

I  am  inclined  to  consider  them  as  among  the  last  etchings  by 
Goya  s  hand  before  his  failing  eyesight  forced  him  to  lay  aside  the 
needle,  and  this  belief  is  supported  by  the  larger  size  and  broader 
execution  of  the  plates  themselves. 

32 


A  further  edition  was  printed  by  the  Academy  in  1891,  the 
impressions  of  which  are  very  inferior. 

The  Prisoners,  the  Obras  Sueltas,  etc. 

In  addition  to  the  four  series  already  described,  there  are 
several  equally  important  etchings,  less  frequently  to  be  met 
with.  Foremost  among  these  must  be  placed  "The  Prisoners." 
Of  these  there  are  three  plates  ;  as  in  the  case  of  several  of 
Goya's  finest  plates,  only  one  contemporaneous  set  of  proofs,  that 
which  he  himself  gave  to  his  friend  Cean  Bermudez,  is  known 
to  exist.  In  these  three  etchings,  Goya's  powers  as  an  etcher, 
and  his  sympathy  for  suffering,  are  demonstrated  in  a  striking 
and  singularly  direct  manner. 

''La  seguridad  de  un  reo  no  exige  tormento,'"^  he  wrote  in  pencil 
on  the  proof  of  the  first  of  them,  a  poor  wretch  with  his  hands 
bound  behind  his  back,  and  his  feet  in  irons,  bent  double  with 
suffering,  in  a  corner  of  his  cell ;  the  second  plate  shows  another 
prisoner,  bound  hand  and  foot,  with  his  neck  in  a  heavy  iron 
collar,  attached  by  chains  to  the  walls — ''Si  el delinquente  que  mtiera 
presto,'"^  he  wrote  on  this  one.  The  third  shows  a  miserable 
pathetic  creature,  once  obviously  a  fine  and  robust  man,  his  feet 
in  irons,  and  his  hands,  crossed  in  front  of  him,  secured  by  heavy 
chains  to  the  walls  on  either  side  of  him  ;  a  masterpiece  of  etching, 
drawn  with  a  massiveness  suggestive  of  bronze.  Tan  Barbara  la 
seguridad  como  el  delito  " — such  monstrous  barbarity  of  treatment 
vies  with  the  crime  committed — the  imagination  for  injustice 
shown  in  these  plates  is  not  so  rare,  perhaps,  among  men  who 
have  themselves  been  somewhat  maimed  by  life,  as  among  people 
more  correct,  more  dignified  and  more  virtuous  than  Goya.  No 
anarchist  could  formulate  a  more  terrible  indictment  against  a 
dictatorial  government  than  this  pintor  del  rey. 

These  three  etchings,  which,  with  the  impressive  fantastic 
landscapes,  and  a  plate  of  a  colossal  figure  seated  on  a  hill 
overlooking  an  immense  landscape,  are  the  most  impressive  of 
Goya's  etchings,  outside  the  actual  series.  The  third  plate  of  The 
Prisoners,  which  came  into  the  hands  of  M.  Lefort,  was  printed  in 
the  Gazette  des  Beaux  Arts.    Of  the  first  two,  which  were  in 

^  The  safe-keeping  of  a  prisoner  does  not  necessitate  torture. 
2  If  he  be  guilty,  why  not  despatch  him  at  once  ? 

33 


the  possession  of  Mr.  Lumley,  an  English  collector,  a  few  prints 
were  printed  in  1859,  and  may  occasionally  be  met  with. 

The  plates  known  as  the  obras  szieltas,  no  prints  of  which 
contemporary  to  Goya  are  known  to  exist,  and  which  were  etched 
at  Bordeaux,  also  belonged  to  Mr.  Lumley,  who  printed  proofs  of 
them  on  very  coarse,  stout  paper.  These  are,  a  man  swinging,  a 
woman  on  a  swing  with  a  cat  watching  her  from  a  bough  of  a  tree, 
an  old  bull-fighter  with  a  bull  lying  down  behind  him,  and  two 
plates  of  majas.  They  are  all  somewhat  crudely  etched  and  bitten, 
and  were  probably  the  last  plates  executed  by  Goya.  To  complete 
the  list,  are  the  much  earlier  etchings  after  the  pictures  of  Velas- 
quez, which  are  scarcely  more  than  very  skilful  maps,  a  large  and 
mediocre  plate  of  a  popular  scene,  a  rare  print  of  which  is  in  the 
Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  a  blind  guitar-player  tossed 
by  a  bull,  (early  prints  of  which  are  extremely  brilliant  and  very 
rare,  but  the  plate  has  since  been  reprinted,)  and  three  indifferent 
etchings,  treating  of  religious  subjects. 


The  Lithographs 

The  extreme  rarity  of  Goya's  lithographs  has  made  it  impossible 
for  me  to  see  anything  approaching  a  complete  collection.  The 
Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  although  unfortunately 
without  the  ''Taureaux  de  Bordeaux,"^  still  owns  several  rare 
prints.  Of  these,  the  earliest  known  is  a  spirited  brush  drawing 
of  an  old  woman  spinning,  signed  and  dated  Febrero  18 19. 
Goya,  therefore,  was  already  considerably  advanced  in  years 
before  he  became  attracted  by  this  new  medium.  His  first 
drawings  upon  the  stone  were  made  in  Madrid,  and  of  these  the 
most  important  are  Les  chiens,"  a  bull  attacked  by  dogs,  and  a 
diabolical  scene,  a  man  being  dragged  along  by  demons,  in  the 
Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  reproduced  (Plate  II.). 
This  is  not  only  of  great  beauty  as  a  drawing,  but  also  has  the 
further  interest  of  being  the  first  important  wash  drawing  made 
upon  the  stone.  Mr.  Whistler  has  since  done  several  of  exquisite 
beauty ;  the  unique  proof  in  the  Print  Room  of  the  British 
Museum  has  been  retouched  in  the  less  successful  parts,  with 

1  Three  very  fine  prints  of  the  "  Taureaux  de  Bordeaux"  were  lent  by  Mr.  Charles 
Norman  to  the  recent  Exhibition  of  Lithographs  at  South  Kensington  Museum. 

34 


the  brush ;  it  is  therefore  difficult  to  judge  of  it  as  a  pure 
lithograph ;  Goya  evidently  never  finished  the  stone,  and  no  other 
proof  is  known  to  exist.  M.  Lefort  catalogues  nine  drawings 
made  upon  the  stone  at  Madrid,  the  woman  spinning  mentioned 
above,  a  duel  between  two  people  dressed  in  the  costume  of  the 
period  of  Philip  iv.,  the  bull  attacked  by  dogs,  a  young  woman 
reading  to  two  children  with  another  person  in  the  background, 
a  monk,  a  drawing  of  a  young  girl  sleeping  on  the  knees  of  an 
old  woman,  with  three  others  on  the  right,  and  an  old  hag  seated  in 
the  background,  a  drunkard  seated  with  a  woman,  a  peasant 
trying  to  overcome  a  young  girl,  and  the  ''scene  de  diablerie," 
the  wash  lithograph  of  the  British  Museum. 

It  was  not  until  1825  that  Goya,  with  the  help  of  a  strong 
magnifying  glass,  threw  the  Taureaux  de  Bordeaux  upon  the  stone. 
Three  hundred  prints  of  each  of  these  were  printed  by  Gaulon, 
and  although  they  are  of  considerable  rarity,  are  more  often  to  be 
met  with  than  other  of  Goya's  lithographs. 

These  are  el famoso  Americano  Mariano  Cebellos,  the  Picador 
tossed  by  a  bull,  the  divided  arena,  and  the  dibersion  de  Espana, 
otherwise  known  as  the  Novillos.  These  are  executed  in  the  most 
superb  style,  with  a  vigour  of  conception  and  execution  which 
Goya  himself  never  equalled  in  his  previous  work, — the  whole 
science  of  modern  composition  is  to  be  found  in  these  four 
drawings, — and  which  has  never  been  equalled  since.  An  artist's 
early  work  may  generally  be  said  to  be  his  most  serious  rival,  but 
in  the  Taureaux  de  Bordeaux,  Goya,  at  the  age  of  eighty  odd  years, 
actually  surpassed  himself.  Movement  takes  the  place  of  form, — 
the  tremulous  excitement  of  the  crowds  of  spectators  watching 
the  sweaty  drama  in  the  ring,  the  rush  to  and  fro  of  the  to7^eros, 
the  stubborn  strength  of  the  short  powerful  goaded  brute  with 
the  man  impaled  on  his  horns,  the  dust  and  glitter  and  riot  of 
the  scene  is  rendered  in  a  most  extraordinary  manner.  Three 
succeeding  generations  of  artists  have  helped  themselves  with 
both  hands  from  these  prints,  but  left  them  not  a  farthing  the 
poorer. 

An  indifferent  lithograph,  which  I  find  it  difficult  to  believe  to 
be  by  Goya's  hand,  a  proof  of  which  is  in  the  Print  Room  of  the 
British  Museum,  a  scene  from  a  duel,  and  the  portrait  of  Gaulon, 
Goya's  printer  at  Bordeaux,  (there  is  an  excellent  impression  in 
the  Print  Room,)  are  the  only  other  three  lithographs  mentioned 

35 


by  M.  Lefort  as  having  been  executed  at  Bordeaux.  Another 
print,  evidently  a  unique  one,  is  in  the  Print  Room  of  the  British 
Museum, — a  young  man  in  hat  and  coat,  surrounded  by  demons, 
suggestive  of  a  poem  by  Baudelaire,  not  catalogued  by  M. 
Lefort. 


36 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

A.  Paintings  and  Drawings, 

1.  El  entierro  de  la  Sardina.    From  the  painting  at 

the  Academy  of  San  Fernando,  Madrid. 

2.  Fantastic  Scene  with  Demons.    From  a  wash  Htho- 

graph,  retouched  with  the  brush,  in  the  Print  Room 
of  the  British  Museum. 

3.  Two  Majas.    From  a  painting  in  the  possession  of 

the  writer. 

4.  A  Bull  Fight.    From  the  painting  in  the  Academy 

of  San  Fernando. 

5.  The  Stilt  Walkers — Design  for  Tapestry.  From 

the  painting  in  the  Sala  de  Goya,  at  the  Prado. 

6.  The  Nude  Maja.    From  the  painting  in  the  Academy 

of  San  Fernando. 

7.  The  Manolas  on  the  Balcony.    From  the  painting 

at  the  Palace  of  San  Telmo,  Seville. 

8.  Portrait  of  Asensi.    From  the  painting  at  the  Palace 

of  San  Telmo,  Seville. 

9.  Portrait  of  F.  Bayeu.    From  the  painting  in  the  Prado. 

10.  Charles  iv.  of  Spain  and  his  Family.    From  the 

painting  at  the  Prado. 

11.  The   Duke   of  Wellington.  •  From  a  drawing  in 

sanguine  at  the  Print  Room  of  the  British  Museum. 

12.  Monk  and  Witch.    From  a  miniature  in  the  posses- 

sion of  the  writer. 


B.  Etchings. 

Plate  13.  A  Caza  de  dientes.    From  Los  Caprichos,  No.  12. 

14.  Ya  tienen  asiento.    From  Los  Caprichos,  No.  26. 

15.  Mala  noche.    From  Los  Caprichos,  No.  36. 

16.  Y  AUN  NO  SE  VAN.    From  Los  Caprichos,  No.  59. 

17.  No  SE  PUDE  MiRAR.    From  Los  Desastres  de  la  Guerra. 

18.  Madre  infeliz!    From  Los  Desastres  de  la  Guerra. 
,,      19.  From  the  Tauromachia. 

20.  From  Los  Proverbios. 

Plates  I  and  4-10  are  from  photographs  by  Laurent  of  Madrid. 


38 


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\  M.  F.  A, 

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F,  A. 

Soston 


Raters  i'Cc 
Library 
M.  F.  A. 
Boston 


Refers  nee 
Library 

m,  F.  A 


Tolmaf^ 
Refsrence 
Library 
M.  F.  A. 

Boston 


Tolman 
Reference 
Library 


The  Manulas  on  the  BalcOi\y  :  in  the  Palace  of  San  Telmo,  Seville 


'  Reference 
Library 
M.  F.  A. 


Portrait  of  Asensi  :  in  the  Palace  of  San  Telmo,  Seville. 


1  Reference 


Portrait  of  F.  Bayeu :  in  the  Prado. 


To  In 
Refer* 
Libr 
M.  F 


Toimai. 
Reference 
Library 
M.  F.  A. 
Boston 


Monk  and  Witch. 


A  Caza  on  DIESTHS:  Los  Capriclios,  No.  12 


Library 
M.  F.  A. 
Boston 


Ya  TiENEN  AsiESTO  :  Los  Capi'ickos,  No.  26. 


To  I  man 
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L;br3ry 
F.  A. 
Boston 


Mala  xoche  :  Los  Caprichos,  No.  j6. 


Tolman 
J^etersnc 
Library 
M.  F.  A. 
Boston 


Y  AUN  NO  SE  van:  Los  Caprichos,  No.  jg. 


Library 
M.  F.  A. 
Soston 


^-ibrary 
M.  F.  A. 
Boston 


Tolman 
Reference 
Library 
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Boston 


Library 
M.  F.  A 

Boston 


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Library 

M.  F. 
Boston 


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